King of Thieves
by HayashiOkami
Summary: Slight AU Shmuel, a Hebrew slave, is saved one day by Nekhtamin, a boy who says that he will become the greatest thief in all of Egypt. This is a story about the consequences of being powerless in a ruthless world and the despair of those whose lives are stolen by the cruel whims of the Heavens and their messengers.
1. Nekhtamin the Thief

**King of Thieves**

_If the king of the Two Lands was the proxy of the gods, then the the king of thieves was the hero of the common man struggling to survive on the cutthroat streets of Ancient Egypt. Shmuel, a Hebrew slave, is saved one day by Nekhtamin, a boy who says that he will become the greatest thief in all of Egypt. This is a story about the consequences of being powerless in a ruthless world and the despair of those whose lives are stolen by the cruel whims of the Heavens and their messengers._

* * *

**Chapter One: Nekhtamin the Thief**

The sun's life-giving light seared across his deeply tanned back as he silently toiled in the courtyard of a stonecutter's shop. Years of exposure to the merciless sun had turned the backs of all the stonecutter's men into lumps of sunbaked clay with no choice but to bow their heads to the dusty earth as they worked. The rough and murky slabs of limestone, granite, and alabaster that were to be shaped into the excessively lavish resting places of royal officials and nobles sat against a low wall where Shmuel paused to heave and take in the precious air all living things needed to live.

With lowered eyes he scanned the courtyard, spotting with practiced ease the firm and tall back of the overseer, the thin boyish forms of the apprentices, the bend but broad shoulders of the adult stonecutters, and the slaves who inched across the dirt like dying beasts. Shmuel turned to the equally familiar sight of his older brother and the other slaves who had paused to draw breath. Behind them a massive slab of half-formed alabaster dragged sat resolutely in the dust. It was cold but sharp to the touch, its pearly white surface glinting in the sun. To many it might soon become a thing of beauty, but to Shmuel it would always be as pale as death.

Before the overseer could turn to find them resting, Shmuel and his companions went back to work, tossing blood stained ropes back over their shoulders and digging their heels into the earth trying to move the stone. The younger kids who could not yet handle such a burden scurried around them, wedging heavy cylinders of unremarkable stone beneath the alabaster slab to allow its weight to move from one quarter of the shop to the next.

This was their never ending, fruitless work. Shmuel had never laid eyes upon the grand monuments and the extravagantly beautiful, finished caskets whose stonework they pulled. He knew that he would probably never be granted even the smallest gratification of seeing the finished product of their sweat and tears. Even the caskets carved in this shop were shipped away to be further embellished with paint and gold trimmings. No one in this stonecutter's shop was even capable of carving these slabs - all the workers could do was drill holes and scrape away the outer layers for the real craftsmen to later mould.

This was what it meant to be a slave. They were not allowed to do the work of the youngest of apprentices. Theirs was to labor as beasts of burden, to merely transport, lift, and pile one atop another until their backs broke under the harsh Egyptian sun.

The screaming sounds of metal tools against stone blasted through his ears. When they were finally allowed to return to their dilapidated homes at the end of the day, Shmuel and his brothers who worked in the shop still often heard the echoes of those sounds that pursued them into their dreams. He wondered if he would go deaf someday like his uncle had before he passed into the realm of God.

Shmuel's muscles burned hotter than the sun as they finally reached the shade on the other side of the shop. There, a blank-faced apprentice helped them undo the ropes tied about the stone and one of the old, wrinkled, and bent over workers shooed them away to begin his work of chiseling the alabaster further.

It was horrendously mind-numbing work, all of it. And yet, Shmuel knew that it made their master just as horrendously rich. Near the shop's front he could see the broad-shouldered form of the man's son, a slightly timid if intimidating youth who looked better suited to herding cattle than cutting stone. Shmuel did not know his name, but he did know that when the son's old man died, the entire business along with its slave workforce, would go to him. His chest burned at the thought.

The overseer's dark eyes narrowed in their direction as they trudged back across the yard to move the influx of limestone into the yard. Though the overseer did not move from his position standing over an apprentice he had been admonishing for the past five minutes, Shmuel and his workmates hastened their pace in understanding. Those who were too slow were soon to find a whip licking at their shoulders or a reduction of rations for all of them.

There were a few who muttered curses beneath their breath once they were away from the main complex of the shop, standing before the shipment of limestone that had arrived the other day, carried by yet more slaves who were owned by some other official. Shmuel shifted away from their groans and rebellious talk. He slid over to his older brothers' sides, flashing them brief and tired smiles. They had few words for each other as usual.

There was absolutely no point in complaining where their masters and overseers could hear them. All it would earn a man was a number of lashings. Shmuel saw the glares from the other slaves, the ones who thought it better to die under a whip than to be silent about their servitude. All Shmuel could feel towards them was disdain, for it was those men who received the lashings but the rest of the slaves who paid in heavier workloads and fewer rations.

High noon had already passed and with it, the slaves' only break of the day. The hours crawled across the sky, the path of the sun slowly beginning to signal the end of the day. As usual, one or two of Shmuel's companions had fallen to exhaustion and became too dazed to move until the overseer yanked the man to his feet and chastised him with the whip until his limbs became animated again.

It was during this display, a time when the slaves put down their burdens to watch one of their own punished for supposed laziness, when Shmuel heard the paid workers mutter to themselves, for the sounds of the stonecutter's world had fell to a low hum. The overworked man's cries replaced them.

It was the only word Shmuel ever heard from the world outside the workplace and the Hebrew slums. He listened intently, eyes focused on his dust smeared feet as he blocked out the sounds of the man being punished.

"A thief running through the night!"

"I heard he steals straight from the gods' temples!"

"Ha, what a brave and stupid soul! Pharaoh's men will catch him and see him hung by his toenails for his thieving ways."

So there were those in this world who had enough freedom to freely choose to commit crime, Shmuel thought as they went back to work.

The sky was painted golden red and Shmuel inwardly rejoiced, as this was the last block of limestone they would have to pull that day, when his younger brother Noam slipped and fell at his feet. Shmuel stumbled, hands slipping on the ropes slick with his own blood as his younger brother bumped into his legs. Shmuel, more than sturdy enough to take the blow despite his relatively young age of sixteen years, was far more concerned by the red-faced rage that had bloomed over the overseer's face like an unpleasant sore.

"Get up," Shmuel hissed at his little brother, sounding like a snake hidden in the reeds.

"Get up," hissed their older brothers while the other slaves turned their heads away in pity.

"Get up!" shouted the overseer, loud as a lion's roar. "Lazy dog, you don't even pull stones! Master Mehy has no need of weak, lazy slaves. Come here, boy."

Shmuel's already dry throat tightened with dread like he had swallowed sand. His brothers all turned their heads away, eyes flickering with the pain of acceptance and the smallest light of prayer that the overseer would merely whip him, or that at least he would die quickly and with as little pain as possible. It was the look of one who had lived as a slave for many years, knowing freedom came to them in only the briefest moments of happiness among family, and never again until their death. An eerie quiet fell over the shop, as quiet as a stonecutter's place could be at any rate. There was still the considerably loud clamor filtering in from the streets to break the stillness between everyone present.

The overseer pulled his younger brother's trembling form closer to him and examined his hands, raw and bloodied like so many others in this trade at the tender age of ten. Shmuel's older brother tapped him briefly on the elbow, dark eyes warning him not to open his mouth lest they all be punished.

Shmuel recited the man's words in his head as he watched his younger brother stand there, being examined like a sickly calf. He reached the horrid conclusion just as the overseer gave his brother's shoulder a shove back to the group, the blood stained leather whip lowering harmlessly. The man would not whip his brother to death.

"No use in killing a slave, even a lazy one," the overseer muttered with a brash sigh. Then, louder, in a voice as sharp and cold as the stones they labored over, "You'll just go to the market then. Not too damaged that another craftsman can't use those hands."

Shmuel heard his brother's terrified whimper and suddenly the words came tumbling out of his lips, "No, please don't! He just slipped is all, he's not tired or slacking off! H-he's only ten years old..."

The overseer's face did not redden again, but his sharp-featured face twisted in what seemed to be horror or pain. The sound that escaped his throat was that of deep and humorless laughter, though. "Ha, you're right! A flimsy ten year old brat like that doesn't belong in stonework! Should have sold him ages ago."

"T-that's not..." Shmuel stumbled backwards as his older brother yanked on his arm, but the overseer did not seem to notice. Instead, he lifted the worn leather whip in his hand and approached Shmuel's form, which had height but was by no means large.

"All ten year old brats are the same," the man declared with a low growl. "But a boy as old as you should know his place! Get on the ground and maybe I won't sell you as well!"

Shmuel's legs were certainly shaking and his first instinct was to do as he was told and fall to his knees. Even if he wanted to prostrate himself on the ground and beg for forgiveness, at the moment he could do nothing but stare at the man's merciless, wrinkled face with wide eyes and his heart pounding so hard in his chest he thought it would simply burst. Shmuel was no stranger to the whip, though it had dealt him far less damage than his daily toils ever could, but he remembered the sting of the leather and of the humiliation and shame that filled him.

Even a beaten dog had its pride, after all, even if only a little sliver was left.

So consumed by the threads of white hot fear for what would come after the beating - would he be sold or would he be killed and what of his younger brother - that Shmuel did not notice the noise outside the shop increase considerably while the overseer leered over him. If he noticed, he would have no doubt been as curious as the next. Such public spectacles were almost the only form of entertainment everyone was allowed to enjoy, after all.

Given that his ears were ringing with promises of separation from his beloved family, dwindling as it was these past few years, Shmuel did not notice the screaming of the crowds outside until there was a loud crash near the front of the shop. One of the apprentices who was busy replacing the stonecutting tools for the day shouted in terrified surprise, stumbling backwards as the figure that had come tumbling from over the shop's low stone walls rose.

The sounds of life returned to Shmuel's ears. Men were shouting on the other side, demanding the doors to open, and the overseer abandoned the whip to let the guards of the marketplace within their walls. The workers cast panicked glances at the stranger who had breached their workplace, the figure shrouded in a sand colored traveling coat that had seen better days. Behind him, Shmuel's brothers whispered harshly in his ear, insisting that they retreat to the shadows.

Before Shmuel could move, the cloaked figure leapt from the ruined worktable, darting across the courtyard with the swiftness of a cat, pausing to glance at the doors as they opened. All at once at least ten guards came rushing in with an assortment of swords and spears drawn, their bare chests heaving as they called for someone to stop the man who had broken in. The stranger in return reached under the cloak, drawing a simple dagger as he fell into a crouch.

"The man who catches that thief shall be granted his freedom!" bellowed the guard who stood before them all. "Don't let him get away!"

In retrospect, he probably only said such a thing because at least ten slaves and five paid workers stood between the stranger and the freedom of the backstreets and the Nile beyond. All at once, the men around Shmuel jumped to their feet with renewed vigor. How hard was it to catch a single man, after all?

Shmuel's heart no longer pulsated in terror as he recalled the workers' earlier gossip about a thief. His mind, so muddled by the heat of the day's work, could no longer remember any further information. He watched in a daze as the cloaked person slipped under the grasping arms of the strong slaves who should have been able to seize his shorter, thinner frame in less than a minute. The long pointed dagger in his hand skimmed the arms and sides of some, but succeeded in killing nobody.

"Shmuel, catch him!" His older brother's voice jolted him from his daydreaming.

The stranger was coming straight towards him, perhaps having sensed that he was completely out of it. Shmuel roused himself and reacted just in time to grab the stranger by the wrist, his wide eyes watching the path of the dagger in the other man's hand as the momentum from the running man made the two of them spin wildly out of control. The breath was stolen straight from Shmuel's mouth as he stumbled into the stranger's thankfully blade-less side, but this person was much sturdier than he thought he would be.

He thought he heard a furious hiss, but that may just have been the wind in his ears as the supposed thief took advantage of the flurry of movement to transfer ownership of the dagger to Shmuel.

At first he had no idea what had happened. He had just managed to register the sensation of warm, heavy metal in his palm when he also realized that the thief had broken free of his grasp, was running towards the wall, and the guards who had not seen the commotion were now free to think of Shmuel as a rebelling slave.

Just when he thought that his life could not get any worse.

Shmuel tripped over his feet as he whirled to find the man who had so suddenly turned his life upside down. He had no choice but to run after the cloaked figure, who was disappearing over the far wall, having climbed the blocks of limestone so quickly he was almost like a wild animal.

The grasping hands and spears at his back, the promise of a slow death for daring to oppose his masters, spurred Shmuel to complete the same journey. Though his muscles burned from the day's work, he found it much easier to push through the pain to reach the backdoor that led to the alleyways than it had been to pull those stones earlier.

The cloaked man was crouched at the far end of the alleyway, still but unharmed and unmolested, it seemed. He spared Shmuel a glance, perhaps eyeing his discarded weapon, and made a quick hand motion that Shmuel nearly missed. _Follow me,_ it meant, and hearing the commotion back in the courtyard, the guards' angered shouts, the desperate cries of the slaves, Shmuel ran after him.

He soon found out that the stranger had not made it over the wall completely unharmed. Shmuel quickly caught up to him, noticing the awkward tilt in his gait that had not been there before. He did not ask for his dagger back and neither did he cast Shmuel suspicious glances. He couldn't help but wonder who this man was, why he had appeared when he did, and what would become of Shmuel himself now? Might this man also be a slave? It was impossible to tell with the cloak tossed over his head, his clothes smeared in dust, no doubt from the chase.

Shmuel had no voice. All of his energy was spent on running, taking sharp turns when required and jumping over piles of trash and over low walls when required. The hand holding the weapon burned, but he didn't let it go.

All at once, the stranger stopped and finally spoke, holding an arm out. "Wait, stop," he whispered, the sound of his breaths coming quick but not labored. Shmuel barely heard the words, but was surprised to find the voice they belonged to was quite soft, not the hard voice of an adult but someone of his age. "And be quiet."

However, he definitely spoke Egyptian with clarity. Maybe he was not a slave. But if he was not a slave, why was he being pursued so ardently?

Shmuel panted beside him. For a time all he heard were their heavy breaths, slowing as the seconds passed. He could not see beyond the building where they had stopped, but the stranger peered across the street every now and again.

"Wait here," he said in a low voice, disappearing with a billow of coarse cloth before Shmuel could say anything. As soon as the person's form disappeared from his sight, Shmuel was overcome by a sensation of despair. The man - no, boy - who had just doomed him to a bloody and horrible death had just abandoned him.

"Oh God, please..." Shmuel muttered more to himself than anyone else. Would God save him, as his mother and father always claimed?

"There are no gods here, only men."

A sharp whisper flitted above his head, a soft voice filled with flat mirth. Shmuel glanced up and found that the cloaked boy was atop a fine bronze coated horse. The shadows of the night had begun to fall over the city quickly, the torches not yet lit. He still could not see the boy's face.

Shmuel swallowed but there was no moisture in his throat. The boy maneuvered the horse, patting its rump expectantly. At last he could see just a bit of his face, which was smooth and the same golden brown hue as many other Egyptians. His eyes were constantly moving, flicking from Shmuel to the road behind him. "Well?" he said impatiently. "Hurry or they'll catch us standing here like stupid fowl waiting to get slain."

Shmuel spared one glance of longing behind him, for his home was in that direction. Their flimsy home might not have been much, but it was where he was born and where his family resided. He could not return now, he knew, even though he had done nothing wrong.

At last he accepted the strange boy's offer, pulling himself up and over the horse, nearly pitching over the side once or twice. He ended up grabbing hold of the boy's shoulders, having nothing else to hold onto. If he minded, he said nothing. He merely took up the reins, told Shmuel to hold on, and spurred the horse into a jumpy gait down the road.

What started as a bouncy trot soon melted into a brisk run, with the boy crouched over the horse's neck and Shmuel gripping him around the waste and closing his eyes tight, hoping that they wouldn't fall off and end up as splatters of blood on the road. A hand placed upon his own made him open them. Though he couldn't see the boy's face, he heard his voice clearly for the first time.

"Don't squeeze so hard," he said testily. "You're choking me."

Shmuel nodded and loosened his grip, though every time the horse lurched he ended up holding on tighter.

All around them he could begin to hear the sounds of people searching for them. It was surprisingly quiet, though.

"They'll be searching the riverside, no doubt," the boy offered at one point, when they had slowed to a fast trot. "Not even thinking that I'd return to the temple."

"We're going to a temple? Why? Don't you rob them?"

A scoff was all the answer he received for the moment. It was quite dark by this time, the clear white moon shining above them, the beginnings of the desert cold beginning to chill his skin. The lights of the city were coming to life, burning at uneven intervals. Whenever they passed under the light of the fire, Shmuel hid his face against the rough canvas of the boy's cloak.

The temple came into view, stunning in its height, though Shmuel could not really appreciate its form for any number of reasons, the least of which that it looked particularly ominous in the dark. However, they did not approach the temple any further. Instead, they traveled away for it for quite some time, until they reached an unmarked alleyway. Here, the boy climbed off the horse and motioned for Shmuel to do the same.

Shmuel noticed the other figured cloaked in the shadows too late, but his escort did not seem surprised or angry. Instead, the other person flipped back his hood to reveal a young face about the same age as Shmuel and the thief boy.

The new arrival sighed and shook his head in mock disapproval. "My little brother, whatever shall I do with you? I told you it was a bad idea to steal from a temple of the gods! And the temple of Amon, the god of this very city, at that! And who's this?"

"Shush, Renpet," said the thief with a dismissing wave. "You've got all the food and jewelry?"

"Yes, but-"

"Ah, I caused him considerable trouble. It would be quite inconsiderate of me to just leave him to get executed by the guards. Come on, we'll talk while we ride. It's a long way to Khmun."

"Ah, who _is _he though?" The other person, Renpet supposedly, stepped closer, but his dark eyes held no malice and none of that judgmental, evaluating stare of the overseer and Shmuel's former master. "Who are you and what life has my brother stolen you from?"

"I'm...I'm Shmuel," he responded uneasily at this new person's surprisingly soft voice. It held none of the brash, quick intonation of the thief, though they sounded rather similar otherwise. "I worked for Mehy the stonecutter as a..."

"A slave?" Renpet supplied when Shmuel had lost the words to continue. Renpet simply nodded and motioned to the two horses standing idle behind him. "No matter, you can switch on and off between my brother and I. Let's hurry. Khonsu of the moon will see us out of the city safely, but only so long as it's dark."

"But - I'm..." Shmuel breathed unevenly. "Doesn't it bother you that I'm a Hebrew and a slave?"

"Not if it doesn't bother you that we're cutpurses and just robbed the temple of Amon," said the thief boy, apparently the younger brother of Renpet, not that he could tell in this lighting. His voice was tinged with mirth again, this time far less dark and harsh. "There are far worse things you can be."

Shmuel nodded. Where did he have to go anyways? Maybe God had brought these two, however strange they were, to him for a purpose. Maybe his mother was right. Maybe it was okay to believe. "Just one more thing. What's your name?"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you?" said the thief with a voice that said he was perfectly aware that he had never divulged his name. He smiled, a gesture that Shmuel just barely saw by the half moon's light. "Well, as you heard, this is my brother Nefer-renpet, but most call him Renpet. As for me, I am the person who will become the greatest thief in all of Egypt, Nekhtamin!"

* * *

_This story works under the assumption that both the Hebrew God and the gods of Egyptian mythology all exist in the same world to some degree. This story is not intended to say that both or neither exist at all. If you don't like it, don't read this story._

_I'm not sure if Shmuel was a name that was used at that time; let me know if it's out of context or something._

_Most of this story is populated by OCs, since there are practically no characters from a low social class besides the slaves in Prince of Egypt._


	2. Dawn of the Day

**King of Thieves**

**Chapter Two: Dawn of the Day**

The night was cold and the wind like powerful blows upon his naked back. The watery light of the moon led them through the desert dunes, now dark monoliths that sank into the blurry, indigo stained horizon. Above their heads were the bright white stars scattered across the sky and blinking intermittently. Shmuel pressed as much of his exposed skin as possible against the horse's steaming sides, but his teeth still chattered as the beast trod through the sands at an even clip. Some time long after the last buildings on the outskirts of the city slunk into the darkness behind them, the one called Renpet pulled a spare cloak from the pack strapped to his horse's rump and passed it to him.

The gift did not come without a warning. "It's a little dirty," he admitted with a breathless chuckle, concealing the lower half of his face with a cupped palm as if he wished to whisper a secret to an invisible person next to him. "We haven't had a chance to wash it, so I apologize for the smell."

Shmuel nodded gratefully anyways, taking the coarse linen cloth and shivering as he wrapped it over his shoulders. No matter how clean one tried to keep their home in the Hebrew slums, it always reeked of the human scents of sweat and filth. Lifting the edge of the cloak to his nose, Shmuel thought that it would hardly compare. It was probably just a spare saddle blanket that smelled a little too strongly of horse dung. However, a moment later he drew back sharply, nearly falling right off the horse as he found out that sweat and filth was not what Renpet meant by _dirty_.

"This smells like..." He did not finish his sentence, interrupted by the thief boy's soft chuckles. Shmuel did not quite remember his name, Nek-something or another. Egyptians had such difficult names sometimes. The boy tossed a smile over his shoulder, but the motion was over so fast that he could hardly catch hold of his features, only that he was indeed young, maybe even a year younger than Shmuel himself.

"Want to switch? I don't mind the smell."

Shmuel blanched at the admission, ignoring the offer. "_Don't mind?_" he asked in a strained, high pitched voice on the verge of snapping at the seams. "It smells like blood!"

Shmuel was no stranger to that scent, either. He had experienced far too much of it in his young life, but most people he knew at least tried to wash the scent from their clothes, if not the stains. That someone could actually come to tolerate such a wretched scent was beyond him. Shmuel leaned closer to the thief boy, peering at his face from behind, and his expression softened at the truth he saw there.

Shmuel was used to reading expressions, if only to tell with ease when the overseer or their master was in a good or foul mood in order to avoid a lashing or confiscation of what little privileges they had. The distinctly pleasant smile he saw on the thief boy's face wasn't the smile of one who enjoyed the scent of blood, human or otherwise.

He declined the offer, making sure to not press the linen anywhere close to his nose. It was fine, he tried to tell himself; he had dealt with much worse than a blood scented blanket in his seventeen years of living.

Their nighttime ride stretched into the next morning, the three travelers speaking little as their mounts plodded across the desert sands. On occasion, Shmuel heard Renpet mutter strange incantations under his breath, prayers to some god of his to keep them safe in the wilds of the desert lands. Throughout each and every prayer, both Shmuel and the thief boy were silent. Only once or twice the two brothers spoke to each other in half-sentences and mostly about whether or not they were traveling in the right direction.

Now that the sun was starting to rise, staining the sky a light and hazy blue, Shmuel looked upon the horizon and realized for the first time since the moment he chose to follow this stranger that he was free. Though his limbs were sore with exhaustion and he wanted nothing more than to sleep after having stayed up all night riding the horse, he realized that he was breathing clean and cool desert air, free of the threat of the overseer's whip at his back. As warmth seeped into the Egyptian landscape, Shmuel started to laugh gently, eyes alighting with tears that did not fall.

Renpet, who had taken up a position at the rear of their procession, started in surprise. He cast a curious glance over his shoulder at their new companion. Shmuel saw a smile spread across his lips, not one of cruelty or mocking, not even the wry ones that his brother seemed to give, but a genuinely happy smile. His quiet laughter fading, Shmuel stared at the desert sands. Ahead of them a large town was coming into view and just beyond its borders, the Nile and its live-giving waters.

"Egypt's sunrises are deceivingly lovely, aren't they?" Renpet mused as they slowed to a walk, the flat-topped peaks of buildings beginning to come into view on the horizon. "Hard to believe it gets so hot later in the day. Is this the first time you've been out of the city?"

"Yes," Shmuel said with a startling cough. As he tried in vain to clear his throat, he realized that the source of his frog-like croak was the fact that he had not drunk a single sip of water since the extremely short break the slaves had taken ten minutes before the thief boy entered his life. Said boy slowed his horse enough for their calves to brush each other. He leaned over and handed Shmuel a water skin, which he accepted with a grateful nod. "Thanks."

"Sorry," the thief boy apologized immediately, glancing away as if the sand dunes slowly coming into harsher contrast with the sky were incredibly interesting. "I forgot about that. No wonder why you weren't talking much."

"Yes, yes," Renpet hummed with an apparent roll of his eyes. "Dying of thirst can do that to a man, Min."

"Min?" Shmuel stared at Renpet as he sipped at the refreshingly cool water. Renpet merely laughed at his expression, clearly as amused as Shmuel was confused. He was quite sure that the thief boy's name had been much different - and by different he meant much, much longer and harder to say.

"Nekhtamin, Min, same person," Renpet explained briefly. "My brother's named after a goddess, so it's a bit hard to give him a good nickname. Can't exactly go around calling him 'Nekh', now can I?"

Shmuel didn't understand the dilemma at all, but then again he knew the name of only one Egyptian god - Ra - that was spoken of so often and with such reverence that he would have had to been daft not to learn it.

"Are you all named after your...gods?" Shmuel asked haltingly. Even the word _gods_ felt awkward on his tongue, for how could there be such a vast amount of supreme beings in existence at all? If either of the Egyptian boys noticed his faulty pronunciation, they chose not to comment. Shmuel was quite sure that they had never even spared a single thought for _his _people's God, so he considered the possibility that they assumed he would know theirs, having lived in this country all his life.

Renpet shook his head vigorously, invoking a deep and long-suffering groan from his brother. "No, of course not! I'm not named after a god; _nefer_ means beautiful and _pet_ refers to the sky. But there are plenty of people who are named after gods, yes, like Nekhtamin. Or...or the Pharaohs! I'm sure it's similar among your people."

Shmuel nodded for simplicity's sake, having a hard time following Renpet's rapid Egyptian, let alone try to explain concepts he knew only in Hebrew to the pair. It seemed as if they had already moved on from the topic of naming conventions; the twins now chattered quietly as they rode alongside each other. Every now and again, one would break into muted laughter and try to smack the other on the shoulder.

"I wish that I could have seen the looks on those priests' faces when they saw what we stole," Nekhtamin sighed longingly. He reached behind him and patted the lumpy pack strapped to his horse with a wide grin. "It was stupidly easy, too."

His brother shook his head and reached over, trying to hit him over the head and failing, his horse jerking in protest of the sudden movement. "That's nothing to be proud about," he scolded without real malice. As they drew closer to the outlying residential area around the city, they could just make out the tiny forms of people crawling down to the riverside to bathe and clean their linens. It was a fairly large town with a port that was already crowded with workers and boats unloading their cargo.

The sky was quickly easing into a lavender hue, the first lines of pink and gold seeping into the horizon. The sand beneath their feet was still cool to the touch, but the ghoulish shadows that their forms cast on the ground were beginning to lengthen and emerge from the darkness of the night. Renpet moved around Shmuel's still form, tapping his shoulder just once to indicate that he wanted the blood stained cloak back.

Shmuel shook it off his shoulders with haste, handing the foul thing over gingerly. Renpet chuckled at his disgust and folded it neatly, shoving all of their traveling cloaks into the pack. Shmuel still wondered why they had three cloaks - why one was stained with blood - but he held his tongue. He had always been good at keeping silent, never asking the questions that swirled around in his mind. What happened yesterday was just...

Looking out over the port town, seeing the Nile from such a distance, and having an expanse of seemingly endless desert at his back had distracted him from the reality of what his life had become in the last few hours. Surely his family thought him dead, perhaps killed by the thief, perhaps killed by the guards in his escape. Suddenly, this novel sight was no longer so brilliant. A sharp pain burrowed deep into his chest at the familiar faces of his family - his younger brothers and sisters, his older brothers, and his mother who was long gone from this world.

Sure, he was free, but they were still in chains. Sure, he was free, but he was also a fugitive who was no doubt implicated in a crime he didn't commit.

"Is this...Khmun?" Shmuel asked after remembering the conversation that the two had held when he first met Renpet.

Now that it was getting lighter, the sky dyed a delicate pink the color of a newborn babe's cheeks, he could really get a good look at the two and was surprised to find that there weren't many differences at all. Renpet had a sharper, more well defined face, but they looked surprisingly similar. Shmuel was no stranger to twins of course; one of his childhood friends' sisters were twins.

Nekhtamin grinned as they started walking towards the town, having motioned for Shmuel to get off the horse. He gathered the leather reins of both his and Shmuel's horses and passed them to Renoet, who was still sitting atop a golden red mount. Now that it was light out, he saw how the beast's coat burned like the desert sands or the blazing sunset. "We're not at Khmun yet, to answer your question. That's further down the Nile, all the way in Lower Egypt. It'll take more days than we're prepared to face in the desert to get there. This town's called Gebtu and it's pretty big, but that's just perfect."

"Perfect as in...easier to hide?"

"See, he thinks like a thief already!" Nekhtamin directed his exclamation towards his brother, who turned away with a huff of disdain and adamantly crossed arms.

"I never said otherwise!"

"You were thinking it. You were _definitely_ thinking it! You think being a thief's such a horrible thing."

"Well, it's certainly not going to guarantee us a long and prosperous life! And we're stealing from the gods, in case you forgot! They'll smite us for sure."

They were like any other pair of siblings Shmuel had ever met. At least, ones who got along. Watching them bicker and push each other lightly on the shoulders had him remembering his own siblings, his older brothers who would ruffle his forever dusty and unruly hair with long-suffering chuckles.

"Are you going to sell...you know, this stuff?" Shmuel nodded down at the rough canvas pack in his arms. It was deceptively heavy. They said that they had stolen temple treasures - that had to mean gold. Shmuel had seen scarce amounts of the expensive material, just catching the occasional glimpse of it in the streets, worn by some official or a rich lady accompanied by her modestly dressed handmaids.

"We'll just lay low for now," Renpet said, looking him over with a critical eye. Shmuel shrunk back, knowing very well what he was examining. "And get you cleaned up. You look like you have one foot in the afterlife already."

"What about you?" Shmuel asked.

"Oh, I'm-"

"Renpet's taking care of the horses," Nekhtamin interrupted as he trotted forward, the unwieldy weight of the lumpy saddlebag not bothering him in the least as he slid down a gentle slope of sand. "Horses are only for the rich and the army, so it'd be stupid to take them into the city. But it'll take forever to get to Khmun if we go by foot. Not to mention we might get finished off by Set, god of chaos, before the Medjay ever find us."

"I hardly think they'll send the _Medjay_ after a pair of petty thieves," Renpet said, his voice fading away as he headed away from Shmuel and Nekhtamin. "And please don't give them a reason to want our heads on a pike by the time I get back, Min!"

The slightly shorter and much less muscular boy tossed his head to the inky blue sky and laughed so lightly that Shmuel might have missed it if he wasn't walking right next to him. Hearing that sort of laughter for the first time in years, the laughter of someone who at that very moment could care less about what happened in the past or what would occur in the future, Shmuel couldn't help but smile.

After the sun had already started to turn the sky a golden hue and the azure blue of the night faded into a lighter shade, the remaining two reached the edges of the port town, which was already stirring to life. People moved quietly, slinking out of homes to set up shop or cleaning themselves before work. Muscular laborers with calloused hands and dressed in nothing but loincloths moved together in groups. Merchants off to the port or the market wore clean white linens.

The two boys in their dusty and sand-encrusted clothes kept to the side streets, slipping through alleyways between homes and staying away from anyone with curious eyes. Nekhtamin led the way, as solemn and quiet as he was last night, running away from the marketplace guards with a Hebrew slave tailing him.

Why did he do it? Why, when no other Egyptian before that point had ever looked straight at Shmuel and saw him as a human being? Even now Nekhtamin and his brother gave Shmuel no special attention, but neither did they ignore his existence altogether. Instead, they had chosen to bring him along on whatever journey they were on, even though they knew nothing about him aside from his name and his former work.

"Were...were you two slaves once?" Shmuel asked in a low voice as they crept along the cool walls of the housing district.

"Hm? No." Nekhtamin didn't ask why Shmuel had assumed such a thing and didn't sound like he particularly wanted to know, but he answered without missing a beat. "Our parents were farmers."

Shmuel frowned. Such an answer didn't explain much. He didn't know too much about the other slaves in Egypt, having seen mostly Hebrew slaves his entire life, but he knew that Egyptians could be made slaves, too.

"We're here!" Nekhtamin exclaimed softly. He went up to the dingy wooden door of someone's home and knocked. The motion made the rotting beams groan in protest. The Egyptian boy turned around with a smile. "This is Abt's home. She's a friend of ours, sort of."

Before Shmuel could ask what 'sort of' meant, the door creaked open and a woman emerged. She looked older, closer to Shmuel's mother's age before she passed away, but the lines of her face were much more severe. She greeted them with a frown, which stayed on her lips even as she ushered them inside. Her dark eyes fell upon Shmuel and narrowed considerably. However, she continued to move about her home with swift motions, entering the house's only other room in a flurry of dust smeared linen.

"Get up, you two lazy bastards!" she rasped with a few resounding smacks in the other room. Shmuel's eyes widened, but he didn't dare move. Looking to the remaining twin, he saw that his traveling companion was quite relaxed. In fact, Nekhtamin seemed to be vaguely smiling as the woman reemerged with a deep roll of her eyes. She grabbed a roughly moulded clay pot from the ground and shoved it at the nearest person - Shmuel. "Toss this on their heads if they don't wake up in the next five minutes. I suppose you'll be wanting breakfast, huh? And where's that brother of yours? You know, the _nice one?_"

"Yes please!" Nekhtamin chimed, breaking away from their tight triangular formation to dump the packs along the far wall. Shmuel glanced into the pot, turning it slightly and hearing water slosh about inside. The clay's rough texture against his hands reminded him of the crude watering jugs his own parents had in their home. "He's settling the horses down. Should be back in two hours or so."

Shmuel wondered exactly how they intended on hiding three horses in the desert, but he held his tongue and shifted in place, really hoping that there was only water in this pot.

"So, who's the kid?" The woman, Abt apparently, pointed sharply to Shmuel. "Another of your lackeys?"

"How many times do I have to tell you, they're not lackeys; they're my friends! And this is...Um, your name, what was it? Foreigners' names are always so hard to remember."

Shmuel recoiled with a dark glare of resentment that startled even himself. "It's Shmuel. Your name are much harder, you know."

The other boy laughed and dismissed his distaste with a wave of a hand. "No it's not. _Nekh_ comes from _Nekhebet_, right eye of Ra and goddess of Upper Egypt. Renpet's name is _nefer_ for beauty and _pet _for sky. Yours is the name that sounds weird."

Shmuel quieted. Indeed, there were many Hebrew slaves in Egypt, but they were far outnumbered by their masters. There had never been a single Egyptian who had bothered to ask his name. Mostly, he was just called "boy" if someone really needed to catch his attention.

No one in the room paid him any heed once he quieted down, the woman preparing what looked and smelled to be day-old bread and lumpy onions and radishes. Nekhtamin had started sorting through the packs and Shmuel stood in the center of the room, holding the water pot as he glanced about uncertainly.

"That's five minutes already," Abt called at last. "Go wake those two idiots up."

Before she was even finished speaking, a loud clamor came from the other room; the short figure of a child no more than twelve stumbled out from the dim area of the house with his shendyt half falling off his waist. The unbalanced side-ponytail that younger kids seemed to wear wasn't even in a ponytail yet; the tangled mess of hair whipped to the side as he turned to the guests.

"I'm up, I'm up!" he said hurriedly. When he saw the guests in his house, he instantly brightened, running up to Nekhtamin with a wide smile across his tanned face. "It's Min! You're back already? How long you staying for? Where's Renpet?"

Nekhtamin leaned down and patted the boy on his head with a quirky smile. "Just a few days," he said apologetically. "And Renpet's down at the oasis. Now go wake your father before our friend here pours water over his head."

The young boy slunk away, sounds of a scuffle soon coming from within the other room. Shmuel lowered the water pot, his arms vaguely aching. Normally such a light burden would hardly bother him, but the rising sun outside was a painful reminder that he hadn't slept at all last night. Nekhtamin seemed to be just fine as he bustled about, separating foods wrapped in linen cloths from the gleaming treasures they filched from the temple. Shmuel found himself peering over Nekhtamin's shoulder, staring in wonder at the gold coins, sculptures, and necklaces. There wasn't much, only about seven items in all, but it was more than Shmuel had ever seen in his life.

Nekhtamin glanced over his shoulder, laughing in amusement when Shmuel stumbled away. He lifted a delicate necklace made of rows of small, glimmering chains, letting the impossibly thin links slide through his fingers. Next he lifted the gold statue, frowning as he tested the weight in his hand. The multitude of gold coils sat in the dirt at his feet. The young boy came over to take the food away - a few loaves of oddly fragrant bread, strips of dried meat, and fresh garlic, onions, and cucumbers. In the other pack was a jug containing some sort of drink.

"Disgusting, isn't it?"

Nekhtamin lifted one of the gold coins and held it up for Shmuel to see, abruptly dropping the circular trinket in the palm of his hand. He rolled the item between his fingers, staring at the design etched into its surface and wondering just how anyone could craft such a delicate thing. He glanced over at Nekhtamin curiously; he sounded as though he were speaking through a mouthful of sand. His hand tightened into a fist around a handful of coins.

"Look how much they have hidden away in the temples!" He threw the money to the dusty floor with a hiss. "Food and gold in abundance, yet they won't even lower our taxes when the harvest's bad."

Shmuel watched the other boy's lips twist into a sneer. His dark eyes flickered shut for a little longer than a second before he jumped to his feet, running into the next room and reemerging with an older man who he assumed was the woman's husband. Not that he could really tell - they all looked about the same to him. Egyptians, that was.

"Was the harvest that bad this year?" Shmuel asked. Of course he had heard others talk about it in the shop, but stonecutters were not really ones for gossip, as he had learned over the years. They spent their days bent over their work, which was always far too loud to be heard at anything short of a scream. Most of the workers and apprentices only spoke during their lunch break.

Nekhtamin fixed him with a crooked gaze. "Where have you been?" he muttered. "Yeah, the Nile flooded too much this year even though they've been building so many temples and monuments to the gods. It's all anyone's been talking about recently."

"What do the building projects have to do with it?" Shmuel questioned perhaps a bit too eagerly if Nekhtamin's strange glance in his direction was anything to judge by.

"It's Pharaoh's duty to uphold _ma'at_, the correct and right order of all things in this universe." Nekhtamin's voice was light and rhythmic, the tune of his words no doubt familiar to him and sounding slightly rehearsed. "When the pharaoh fails to maintain the balance, the natural world falls out of order, and in those years the Nile may not flood enough or it may flood too much. Either way, the harvests in those years won't be good."

"But everyone says that this country is doing great." Shmuel was reminded of the few clients who came into the stonecutting shop to chat with his former master, Mehy. They often said such things. With the amount of business they got by order of the pharaoh's vizier and officials themselves, he had thought that Egypt was flourishing.

Again Nekhtamin scoffed loudly. "That's what they'd like you to believe. They say that the pharaoh's building so many monuments to appease the gods, and maybe that's his intention, but those damn taxes he keeps raising aren't do anyone out here any good. What's the use of a good flood this year if we're starving in the meantime?"

"You don't even pay taxes, you brat," Abt shot back at him, a sharp smile revealing rows of slightly crooked teeth. She set a series of clay bowls and plates on the low, badly splintering wooden table in the middle of the main room. Everyone started eating, muttering unintelligible prayers of thanks to their gods for the food.

Though none of them bothered to stare, Shmuel felt somewhat ill at ease praying to his God, the Hebrew God. It had always been such a natural motion within his own home and his own community, as derelict as it had been. Even though he wasn't always sure if his prayers would reach God or if God really and truly cared, it felt as natural as breathing to offer thanks. But here among strangers who all uttered their thanks to their own gods, the words suddenly caught in his throat.

He knew that their gods and goddess weren't real - there were so many to keep track of that he wondered if it was perhaps just one strange memory game - but how could he protest when his own God had done nothing for him in all his years of living, either?

Shmuel smiled tentatively in thanks as Abt slid a plate over to him. Everyone had a share of the stolen bread, along with the onions and radishes from this small family's garden out back. He lifted the chunk of fragrant bread, head reeling from the mere thought that they had baked precious spices into it. It took him a moment to even take a bite, mouth watering at the richly herbal taste, even though the bread itself was a bit hard and stale.

"So Sahtu, you know what apprenticeship you want to take yet?" Nekhtamin asked the younger boy, who was fidgeting while he nibbled at an onion. The twelve year old nodded to the older man who was busy trying to fix his clothes with a great yawn that filled the house. He spared a glance towards Shmuel, staring at him with a perplexed frown on his face, but he shrugged after a second and came to sit next to his wife.

"Same as Nez. I might as well be of some use to you," he said with a little smile that seemed to Shmuel more like the quirky smirk of a child up to no good. His naturally high, boyish voice rose in pitch as he blurted out words that came so fast Shmuel could hardly keep up. "I'm not so smart like you two and I don't want to ever end up like my parents. Nez said he'd put a good word in for me in a few moons. Can you believe it? Me, a goldsmith?"

"That's great! It's a good trade." Nekhtamin nearly knocked over the water jug in his haste to throw himself over the younger boy's back with a laugh. "I'm so proud of you! Our little Sahtu's gonna be a goldsmith!"

It was somewhat amazing how Nekhtamin's voice took on such a gaudy lilt. Sahtu, whose unruly hair was not yet tied up in the odd single side-ponytail that most Egyptian male children seemed to have, tried to shove Nekhtamin away with a grumble. The two adults at the table didn't laugh, but their eyes were creased with genuine happiness at watching the two boys bicker and tousle on the ground.

Shmuel watched them quietly. Before he could lose himself in memories of his own, memories of the little happiness that he and his family had claimed for their own in the Hebrew slums, Nekhtamin had pulled away and tapped him on the shoulder.

"You're awfully quiet. You can relax, you know. It's safe here. We've known Abt and Nezem for years."

"That's...that's not it. Just..." How could he tell the brightly smiling teenager that the familial happiness contained in this room simply caused him pain, knowing that this was exactly what he left behind in Thebes? How could he tell this carefree boy-thief of how he knew that no matter how hard they tried to accommodate him, he would never really be one of them: an Egyptian.

Shmuel heard nothing from the other boy, whose sharp features were even more defined under the morning sunlight. He nibbled on the bread, his stomach clenching in anticipation of more food than he had seen in a long time. Come to think of it, perhaps their lowered rations were due to what Nekhtamin had called a bad harvest. Lately, it had been getting hard to acquire even the basic ingredients to make the cheapest bread.

"Sahtu's not their son," Nekhtamin said suddenly. His voice was so soft that Shmuel almost missed his words. Nekhtamin was watching the other two fool around with a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "We met him over a year ago. We were still fooling around the streets of Khmun at the time; we stupidly went where we really shouldn't have been. I made that decision so quickly that Renpet really thought I was going to get us killed."

"Decision?"

"Mhm, just like you. Completely not in the plan, just happened."

"You're the one who made them think I was trying to escape in the first place..."

"Can't say I'm sorry that I did," Nekhtamin chuckled humorlessly. He nodded to the stripes of pale scar tissue that laced Shmuel's shoulders and back, as well as the deep grooves where the ropes had chafed at his skin day in and day out. "Even if you have to leave everything you've ever known behind, freedom's still better than all the gold in the world."

In that moment, Shmuel remembered the sight of the azure, predawn sky and the blazing golden red of the rising sun existing simultaneously on the same horizon. He remembered how, just a few hours ago, he was riding under the cold light of the moon with no one at his back to bellow orders or strike him with a whip. And for just that moment in time, he had come to understand with perfect clarity just what Nekhtamin was saying. If anyone had told him that leaving behind his loved ones was worth it for freedom, he might have disagreed.

It pained him to know that he really would throw everything away just to grasp that freedom.

Nekhtamin continued on. He didn't seem the oblivious type, but he never seemed to linger too long on any words of his that made Shmuel fall silent and contemplative. "Anyways, Sahtu's real parents were poor farmers with a lot of debt and a lot of kids. They sold him to the traders-"

"The slave traders?" Shmuel's voice dropped to a muddled hiss halfway as he realized too late that he had said the words far too loudly. Everyone turned to watch him with owlishly wide eyes. Suddenly it was quiet, only the faint thrums of sound from the outside world to be heard. "I, um..."

The loud thump of Nekhtamin's elbow striking the table made him start.

"People do that," he said darkly, eyes narrowing at some distant memory. Slightly behind him, Sahtu turned his head away, staring straight ahead at nothing. "Sell their own kids for just a few sacks of grain and vegetables."

"They couldn't help it!" Sahtu blurted in a strained voice that fluttered between steady and choked. His eyes, a lighter shade of brown than the twins, stared straight at Shmuel. "The harvest was bad that year...I have a lot of brothers and sisters...Of course they didn't want to, but. You know, they had to. Because my older brothers were already working in the fields and they didn't want to...to my younger sisters or brothers."

Suddenly, not even the light of the sun could disperse the gloom that had settled over them. It was Abt and her husband Nezem who finally moved, shuffling the occupants in the room around to return life to their limbs. Abt encouraged Sahtu to his feet, telling him to dry his tears and go to the river to bathe already, and Nezem moved to the pile of stolen gold and began to talk business with Nekhtamin.

"His parents sold him to be a slave..."

"It's not that rare," Nekhtamin muttered. More than sadness, his voice was laced with anger and his eyes burned at the sight of some distant memory that Shmuel did not have access to. "Sorry."

"What're you apologizing for?"

The other shook his head as he climbed to his feet, stretching his limbs out half-heartedly. "It's nothing. Nothing we can fix now, anyways. Now, why don't you get some rest? You must be exhausted."

Shmuel nodded. As if by some magic spell, his arms and legs were suddenly leaden like he was strapped to a block of stone. There was a faint ache behind his eyes, reaching deep within his head like a series of tiny, grasping hands. He was once again aware of the fatigue that had threatened to bring him to his knees before Nekhtamin even came crashing into his life.

Just as the golden light of the sun banished the last remains of the previous night's inky darkness, Shmuel settled against a cool, firm wall of the little house and fell into a deep sleep.

* * *

_An edited chapter two. I removed Kenamon's POV, though he's not entirely gone from the story. Most of the events in this chapter are similar to the previous chapter three, just with some added dialogue. We'll be following Shmuel, Nekhtamin, and Nefer-renpet for the rest of the story. _


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